09-4 Interoperability through co-operation
Interoperability through co-operation
Interoperability is the unquestioned condition enabling to build future smart metering systems and the smart grid.
Likewise, availability of open standards is the unquestioned condition enabling to achieve interoperability.
That’s why the European Commission in its mandate M/441 requests the European Standardisation organisations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI to develop European Standards within an interoperable framework specifying an open architecture, additional functionalities as well as data exchange formats and protocols.
That’s why the European OPEN meter project – an invited partner of the ESOs in carrying out the mandated standardization work – has also set the objective to develop specifications for smart metering agreed on and supported by all major stakeholders, that will form the basis of the European Standards.
That’s why the US congress requests the development of a Smart Grid Interoperability Framework and charged the National Institute of Standards and Technology with the development.
That’s why the IEC SMB (Standardization Management Board) has set up a Strategic Group SG 3 taking charge of global interoperability in setting International Standards for the Smart Grid.
The Mandate M/441 has brought together more than 30 organizations, regulators, utilities, manufacturers, industry interest groups, standardization institutes and others co-operating in the Smart Metering Coordination Group (SM-CG) to prepare the response to the Mandate and to assign responsibilities to ESO Technical Committees for the development of the standards.
The OPEN meter project has brought together 19 organizations, utilities, manufacturers, research facilities, chip manufacturers and standardization organizations co-operating to identify requirements, to establish the state-of-the-art, to identify gaps, to develop and test solutions, and finally drafting pre-standards.
The IEC SMB SG3 co-ordinates the work of 19 Technical Committees co-operating in the development of standards for the smart grid.
Through its members, the DLMS UA is actively participating in all major smart metering standardization efforts. As reported in MI 2009 Issue 3, we have recently established new liaisons. The DLMS UA is a Technical Liaison Partner now of CENELEC, it has signed a co-operation agreement with ESMIG, the European Smart Metering Industry Group, it established liaisons with CEN TC 294, ETSI TC M2M and with the Zigbee Alliance. We believe that these partnerships and liaisons will facilitate co-operation in the development of the interoperable framework required
The IEC 62056 / EN 13757–1 DLMS/COSEM specification, with recent additions for smart metering has been identified both in the OPEN meter project and the EU SM-CG as one of the core standards for the smart metering standard suite.
The DLMS UA is also taking actions to raise interoperability to a new level. Earlier this year, the setting up of a new working group, Final End Users and Developers has been initiated and approved. The objectives of this WG – led by EDF – are the development of use cases, providing feedback from the development and field experience to the standardisation process, and interoperability testing, and in general improve information exchange within the user community of DLMS/COSEM.
The Interoperable Device Interface Specifications (IDIS) initiative, announced in September by Iskraemeco, Itron and Landis+Gyr also aims at improving interoperability by developing specifications, strictly based on DLMS/COSEM, specifying all necessary choices and details necessary to implement selected function sets in a fully interoperable way. These specifications will be validated by the DLMS UA and will be made available for the more than 150 members of the DLMS UA.